2015年5月27日 星期三

A Deliberate Plan For On-Boarding And More Surprises

“The way we do things around here” is an essential part of on-boarding in every organization. It is often overlooked because entrepreneurs wrongly assume “the job” is about having the skill set to do the job. Knowing how to get things done “around here” –which is really a key aspect of the system of the company—is something W. Edwards Deming, the management guru, spoke about a great dea⋯⋯更多

Travis Timmons at Fitness Matters is losing a key team member, a specialist in Women’s Health Physical Therapy, because of a geographic move the team member is making with her family. He had a good candidate in mind to bring in to the company to take up that position.

The update, today, is that the newly hired Physical Therapist has officially joined the team and has been going through the on-boarding process. Over the past couple years, the business has been working to improve the system for on-boarding new team members, and Travis reported to me that the system has proved to make this a fairly smooth transition.

A lesson learned is that the system still needs to be even more deliberate and detailed to make sure the appropriate amount of more time is set aside for training and for introducing the new person to all the other team members –especially learning what they do, and how they can collaborate.

For example, the feedback from the new hire and from the existing team of 13 people is that there needs to be an entire week planned in which every day is systematically laid out to ensure that nothing drops through the cracks.

“The way we do things around here” is an essential part of on-boarding in every organization. It is often overlooked because entrepreneurs wrongly assume “the job” is about having the skill set to do the job. Knowing how to get things done “around here” –which is really a key aspect of the system of the company—is something W. Edwards Deming, the management guru, spoke about a great deal.

The system of your organization is more in control of outcomes and performance than most people think. Deming usually pegged the influence of the system on outcomes somewhere between 85% and 96% depending on the organization.

That seems like a big percentage when you first hear it. One reason for that is the fact that we can seepeople and so we tend to think it is ALL about the people, and of course, most businesses today are “in the people business.” Yet, smart entrepreneurs recognize that systems and processes are often not documented and therefore are not so easy to see.

Such lack of insight [about leading a system in which many of the most important things are often invisible because they are undocumented] causes a lot of businesses great trouble and cost.

Back to Travis: another challenge was also thrown into the mix of onboarding the new person. The original onboarding plan was to have the outgoing team member interact with the new team member for several weeks during the transition period.

“In retrospect,” Travis tells me, “that was probably an unrealistic expectation. When people move away, even only an hour or so away, they experience new challenges, many of them unanticipated, and they are often offered new opportunities –which if they don’t grab right away, will go away. So, each time we updated the timeline to adjust for a new challenge, it changed again because of the next challenge or opportunity that came along. I don’t want to prevent anyone from grabbing an employment opportunity to secure his or her future in a new locale. So, basically, the multiple week transition plan is not going to happen. That was a big disappointment even though I understand why and how it happened.”

From this experience, Travis says he has a better understanding of why some companies choose to make the departure and transition of even a valued person a much quicker process –and many companies don’t even try to have a prolonged transition plan.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Travis says, “And had it worked, it would have been ideal. So, it was probably worth the attempt, but in future I need to lower expectations. We can put a longer transition plan in place, but with the knowledge that the odds are low that it will actually happen in the ideal way.”

The new team member was very much looking forward to the multi-week transition activities. Nevertheless, in the discussions she has had with Travis, it is clear that she sees that the important things are still in place: the focus on the high quality of patient care will continue, as will relationships with referring physicians and practice groups. Making those things happen requires a more intense focus with the shorter transition period, but it all can be accomplished.

Looking ahead, Travis will get the chance to apply the new theories about planning for transitions and for deliberate onboarding because he also just learned that this young company would have its first official retirement, this time of a personal trainer who has 20 years in the industry, a BS degree from The Ohio State University, and is an avid learner with an abundance of continuing education credits. She will be hard to replace.

Travis Timmons: I wonder how many other business owners have this struggle of balancing working ON the business with working IN the business.

He described his feelings by saying that this is a “cool” experience in one way because it means the company has officially been around long enough to have this occur. On the downside, he and others will greatly miss the person who is retiring, and of course, her retirement means hiring someone new.

Here is a key advantage of business growth in a small company: with the anticipation of growth, you –or in this case, Travis—will be anticipating the need to hire people to fit with the growth trajectory.

For example, Travis was able to hire the new Women’s Health Physical Therapist right away because he had been interviewing candidates for that position in anticipation of need for such a hire this year. He also anticipated that a new personal trainer would be needed to support growth this year.

However, even with the anticipated need of a personal trainer to support the company’s growth, Travis had not yet found a strong candidate (as he had for the Women’s Health Physical Therapy position). That means he has to focus on that right away. He would prefer to find candidates via trusted sources in his peer network because of the problems [and time-consuming nature] of just posting a job opening. We’ll see how that turns out.

Are you feeling the pressure he is feeling?

“All of these personnel changes are pulling me more and more back into the business and taking a lot of hours away from working on the future of the business. I have spent the last 2 years working myself into a role of more hours working on the business, and now I feel some of that progress slipping away. It is unsettling, and I am struggling with keeping the current business running smoothly because I am working on two potentially large opportunities for growth –that are under the radar of our competition. If I don’t stay focused on them, they could slip away because of my lack of attention to them. Yet, I want the business to hum, too.”

“I know with certainty that if I do not continue to commit time to working on the business, we will become stagnant or lose ground in the coming years,” Travis observes. “I wonder how many other owners have this struggle.”

The author donates the honorarium paid for this blog to The W. Edwards Deming Institute®, a non-profit helping businesses and organizations achieve success through Deming’s philosophies.